Are you like this all the time? Saying one thing? Doing another? How can we understand you, let alone believe you, when you act like this? We need some consistency to be able to trust you. Otherwise, following you is as chaotic as any other choice. After all, we’re looking for peace, not more problems.       

A Stubborn Mindset

Go ahead and shake your head. Sometimes, well, more than just sometimes, Jesus’ actions didn’t make sense. He told his own brothers he wasn’t going to the Jewish festival. The Levitical law said the men had to be there. What else could you expect from one who wasn’t apt to obey law to the tenth degree? Saying the world hated him, he ended the conversation with “my time has not yet come.” They’d heard that excuse before. 

Changeable

But he went anyway. By going alone, Jesus was able to stay out of the public eye. Good thing. Jewish leaders were looking for him. Just stay low and safe. Fulfill your religious duty and get out of there. But he didn’t.

Inviting Risk

And being incognito wasn’t his forte either. By the third day in, he was up front and teaching in the Temple of all places. Jesus also couldn’t just stick to the script about God’s blessing and provision. Before long, he was saying people were trying to kill him. Actually, he almost did get arrested.

A Daring Comparison

But it was on the last day that Jesus really blew things wide open. He loudly and boldly interrupted the whole ceremony, telling people to come to him. “If you are thirsty,” he proclaimed, “come to me. If you believe in me, come and drink. For the Scriptures declare that rivers of living water will flow out from within.”

Now he did it. These whole seven or eight festival days had been about water: offering thanksgiving for rain, prayers for future rains, and a remembrance of how God provided the ancient Israelites water from a rock while they were in the wilderness.  Jesus took it even farther; he declared he was the source of a “living water.” Those gathered there knew he based his claim from the prophets who said the promised one would make an appeal as he did now. 

Thirsty? Need a soothing, hydrating healing from the chaos, the tension and divisive, destructive troubles of life? Come and drink from this overflowing stream, Jesus offered, a stream which would flow from the very Temple in which they stood, and a promise of an everlasting covenant of mercy and unfailing love. Jesus echoed the very words of ancient prophets such as Isaiah, claiming words of promise as his own.

A Hard Fought Peace

Let’s just say that day proved to be what we’d call another nail in his coffin, rather, in his own flesh. Jesus taught the people and tangled with authorities as he brought a message of hope and healed the sick so their spiritual understanding could be enlightened. But popularity with the populace didn’t protect him. However, in the end his execution would make for the greatest come back story in history.

Google “peace” and you’ll find it. For the most part, your search will reveal how people want it, need it, seek it in so many ways. It’s central to a life of significance and meaning, an assurance the path we live out will find purpose fulfilled as meant to be. Peace in the soul is difficult to define yet otherwise essential to one’s being. Jesus lived and died to bring this peace.

And then, alive and whole, Jesus stood among his petrified followers, who had been in hiding from those same Jewish authorities who threatened him before. “Peace be with you,” were the immediate words spoken to them. Peace: he spoke into their worst fears. Peace: their souls were right with him as with God. Peace: whatever the world might do, they would know a divine contentment. “Peace be with you,” he said again.

Quieting anxiety wasn’t Jesus’ aim though in these words. He was making room in their hearts and souls for what was next, a new purpose as he commissioned them to continue his ministry and message. Even as he would be apart from them in human form, they wouldn’t be separate. They needed to know God through a greater manifestation than could be known in an earthly expression of flesh and blood. One prophet to whom he had alluded described it like that water necessary for which the soul thirsts.

“For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.”

“Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Spirit, known as powerful and substantial as the wind. Spirit, breathed into them with the same life-giving breath produced at creation. Spirit, flowing like living water from a source more permanent than mountainside rock in the wilderness. Spirit, water that becomes a stream poured into all who accept Jesus’ time on earth, reversals of life, and eternal presence by the Holy Spirit. Spirit, not to be contained but a persistent river that finds a path to quench the thirst of those who need God’s love.

Peace be with you.

John 7:1-39      John 20:19-23

Subscribe to The Trouble with Jesus Blog Here.